An interactive exposition “JINR Main Facilities” made by the staff-members of the Institute and the «Intergraphics» company has been opened in the JINR Cultural Centre «Mir» and for now is working in a test mode. The exhibition was timed to coincide with the 65th anniversary of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research: it presents the main scientific projects and research areas of the Institute, as well as the most significant stages of its history.

The exhibition stands and models of the JINR facilities include the Cyclotron, the Collider with a particle detector, the Fast-Neutron Reactor, the Baikal Deep-Underwater Neutrino Telescope and others, allowing visitors to look inside the large physics experiments and answer the questions: “How does radiation affect living organisms? What’s going on inside a collider? How are particles accelerated and how can one bend their trajectory? How is data from large experiments collected and processed? Are there extraterrestrial forms of life? Is a manned space mission to distant planets possible in the near future? How are new chemical elements born? How and why are track membranes created? How can neutrons be used to study matter and assess the ecological situation?”

The first visitors of the Exhibition were students of the Flerov Lyceum No.6 (grade 2B). Nikita Sidorov, a staff-member of the Scientific and Experimental Department of Heavy Ion Physics at RHIC (VBLHEP) gave the visitors a tour of the exhibition hall and introduced the children to the various fields of research carried out by the Institute’s scientists. The primary school students were enthusiastic about the exhibits and asked a lot of questions to the guide. They were fascinated by the virtual reality glasses, with the help of which they could get carried far away to Lake Baikal and peep at the engineers installing a new cluster of a neutrino telescope. Using the VR glasses, they could also walk through the LIT machine hall and look at the supercomputer “Govorun”, examine the NICA complex, the accelerators of the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, and the IBR-2 experimental facilities.

The exhibition will attract people of all ages. Visits must be booked in advance at expo.jinr.ru.